From Dust

Some weird cosmic alignment must be taking place today, because a number of EA games—including the sparkling Crysis 3 and pre-orders for SimCity—showed up on Ubisoft's Uplay store. It's no less strange on the digital shelves of EA's Origin, where Assassin's Creed III and Far Cry 3 sit prominently on the store's splash page. What's going on? As Ubisoft announces today in a press release, it's all part of expanding third-party support to bring titles from various developers.

Ubisoft also says plunking down $20 or more on Uplay through March 4 nets you a free copy of Driver: San Francisco, From Dust, Might & Magic Heroes VI, Rayman Origins, The Settlers 7 or World in Conflict.

What say you? Are we all seeing the stirrings of stronger, teamed-up competition for Steam and GOG?

Last month, Ubisoft said they would patch their online-at-startup-DRM out of From Dust and now RockPaperShotgun are reporting that they have made good on their promise. The next time you fire the game up on Steam it should update and sync up your savegames with the Ubisoft servers. Rejoice!

Previously gamers would have to be online and connect to the Ubisoft servers when they started From Dust, although they could disconnect and continue as normal afterwards.

The DRM was one of many issues with From Dust's launch, if you want our verdict on the game itself, read our From Dust review.